I have mentioned in previous posts that we have become middle aged bird watchers. We have stepped up our game and have multiple seed types and jelly and oranges and hummingbird feeders. I pretty religiously fill up the bird bath and I may even trim our evergreen bushes so they have places to perch. We were super excited a few weeks ago when a house wren and his wife moved into a mostly decorative bird house on our deck. Baby Girl and I sat on the bench super quiet and watched them fly back and forth building their nest. Apparently, male wrens build multiple half-ass nests around an area to try and lure several females to come mate with him. The nest is supposed to impress her - like he is a good provider. So when he lures one, his new wife immediately throws all his sticks and twigs out and makes him help her find smaller twigs and fuzz and stuff to build a softer, better nest to have babies in. That sounds slightly familiar....
So this week, we upped our game and gave our birds names. It seemed the practical thing to do. After all, we are already talking to them all the time anyway - and 'hey birdie' seems so impersonal for a creature that lives in our yard and we talk to daily. In addition to our wren family on the deck, we have a colony of sparrows that live above the treehouse in what was supposed to be a purple martin house, but instead has become sparrow condos. As far as we know, these are the only birds residing in our yard specifically...although the neighborhood is home to a pair of finches and a pair of blue jays that frequent our feeders, as well a collection of teeny, tiny chickadees that will practically sit in my lap.
Baby Girl named the sparrows "Cheesy Potatoes". I am still not completely sure if she intentionally calls ALL sparrows Cheesy Potatoes or if she believes she continually sees the exact same sparrow over and over again. I am not going to ask. Today she said "Hi, Cheesy Potatoes!" to a sparrow in my dad's backyard, apparently believing he followed us to Grandpa's for the afternoon. So all of the sparrow colony is Cheesy Potatoes. I got to name the wren husband. He is Mo. Baby Boy names the wren wife Rose. So Mo and Rose live together on the deck by the house and Cheesy Potatoes 1-6 live about 30 feet away on top of the tree house. They remind me of cranky old neighbors that have been living side by side for forty years. They sit on their porches and squawk at each other all day..."Get off my grass!". They scold me when I go out to weed the pepper plants or harvest salad. Cheesy Potatoes keeps dropping sunflower seeds in my pea teepee and I have a bazillion baby sunflowers sprouting that are not strong enough to ever grow, but are just strong enough to choke out my pretty purple pees. "Get off my peas!" Crazy birds.
We are quite the ecosystem.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
The Day We Hugged People
So I am not really going to be quick to jump into regular life, even though things are opening up. However, we are loosening up a bit and expanding our circle. We decided that any immediate family member that feels the same as us is welcome to be part of our circle - which means our kids get their cousins back. And their aunts and uncles. And their grandparents. Baby Girl was so incredibly excited to hug Busia and Grandma. She very sweetly asked them both if she could hug them - not so shockingly, they both said yes. So began a few days of her asking me who she could hug, what she could touch, where she could go...it is a little heartbreaking to see how much it really affected my kids - especially Baby Girl who is, by far, the most social of us all. Our bigger kids get a few select friends back, our Graduate gets her boyfriend back and our Sophomore gets his dude pack back. Our little kids don't get friends back quite yet, but we are thinking of trying a few outdoor playdates in the next week or two.
I know that we can't live cooped up in quarantine all summer, fearing what the fall may or may not bring. I struggle with this. I struggle with handing this anxiety and unease and NOT KNOWING over to God and just living our best lives over here. What if....what if....what if. Not my strong suit. I believe that there will be a second wave and navigating this middle part is tricky. I just don't want to make a bad decision while waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Soooooo...we are just going to work on better behaviors for the things we CAN control. Washing our hands before we sit down to eat anything. Washing our hands properly, not just getting them wet for a second. Using antibac when we are out in the world and wearing masks if we go inside anywhere. Sanitizing things that venture out in the world with us - phones, purses, car door handles. Not touching our freaking faces. Ugh. We are a family of nail biting nose pickers apparently. How did I never see this??? Work in progress...don't shake hands with my kids.
Next week I am going to try going physically into work for a few hours. I miss my partners and our staff and my desk with the snack drawer and my office with no kids in it. I miss participating in adult conversations without having to hide in a dark closet or barricade myself in the bedroom. I typically work from home most of the time in the summers anyway, so this isn't a huge obstacle for me but it will be nice to get to the point where I can run into the office and pick up what I need and have face to face conversations with the people I plan with. While it is a giant blessing to work from home, it is also a little isolating. I am pretty geeked up to head back in when I can.
All in all, we are well. We survived school at home, we are all healthy and mostly sane, Husband is totally back to work and I am creeping slowly back into work. Our kids have at least some of their tribe back in their lives and some places they can go for a change of scenery. And perhaps most importantly...we have grandmas to hug.
I know that we can't live cooped up in quarantine all summer, fearing what the fall may or may not bring. I struggle with this. I struggle with handing this anxiety and unease and NOT KNOWING over to God and just living our best lives over here. What if....what if....what if. Not my strong suit. I believe that there will be a second wave and navigating this middle part is tricky. I just don't want to make a bad decision while waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Soooooo...we are just going to work on better behaviors for the things we CAN control. Washing our hands before we sit down to eat anything. Washing our hands properly, not just getting them wet for a second. Using antibac when we are out in the world and wearing masks if we go inside anywhere. Sanitizing things that venture out in the world with us - phones, purses, car door handles. Not touching our freaking faces. Ugh. We are a family of nail biting nose pickers apparently. How did I never see this??? Work in progress...don't shake hands with my kids.
Next week I am going to try going physically into work for a few hours. I miss my partners and our staff and my desk with the snack drawer and my office with no kids in it. I miss participating in adult conversations without having to hide in a dark closet or barricade myself in the bedroom. I typically work from home most of the time in the summers anyway, so this isn't a huge obstacle for me but it will be nice to get to the point where I can run into the office and pick up what I need and have face to face conversations with the people I plan with. While it is a giant blessing to work from home, it is also a little isolating. I am pretty geeked up to head back in when I can.
All in all, we are well. We survived school at home, we are all healthy and mostly sane, Husband is totally back to work and I am creeping slowly back into work. Our kids have at least some of their tribe back in their lives and some places they can go for a change of scenery. And perhaps most importantly...we have grandmas to hug.
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
The Day We Practiced Empathy
I have thought about this post, letting the thoughts about it ramble around my brain a bit - hoping if the things that I want to say will be better if they marinate first, like a good steak or pot of stew. I don't know if that really works, but it is my process...
I couldn't be more white. I did an Ancestry DNA and the most southern part of my DNA is from....Michigan. I am highly Slavic, Scottish, Eastern European, French....I am blue eyed and fair haired...I grew up in an entirely white family, in a mostly white town, going to a church where it is rare to see a person of color and going to school in the middle of corn fields with another group of white kids. I don't know if most families handled the issue of race like mine did back then, but it followed the school of thought that we don't see race. Everyone is equal, everyone is made by God exactly the way he wanted them to be, and skin is just a characteristic like hair color. As a kid in school, black history was a week or so of information that never really sunk in. It was awful, but so far removed from what I knew that it was impossible to sink in. I 100% grew up believing race was not an issue anymore, that everyone felt like I did. I had no clue of the bigotry and the hatred and the bias that permeated our country - and still does.
As I grew up, my world expanded. I met and shared conversations and experiences with people of many backgrounds and ethnicities and color. I followed current events and traveled to other cities much more worldly than my humble beginnings. It shifted my lens that I saw race through - showed me that while actual plantation slavery is a thing of the past, many other awful things followed from then up to where we are now. Fear of someone different, fear of something unknown, prejudice that is taught through careless words or racist jokes....so many little things that are woven into our psyche. Some that we know of and some that we just assimilated somewhere along the way.
As a parent, I have never HAD to think about talking about race to my kids. My kids don't face any danger from not having had a race talk. I packaged my race talk in with my be-kind-to-others and God-makes-us-all-different talks, thinking that was enough. We talk a lot about inclusion, about never leaving anyone out. But before this May, I had never sat down and shared so much truth about race in America as I did yesterday. I thought about it for a while. How much is too much for a 6 and 7 year old to understand? As their mom, I want to shield them as long as I possibly can from losing their innocence and trust in people. But if I were a black mom, with black kids...this conversation wouldn't be optional, right? It would be necessary. And if these kids have to lose their innocence, how can I say I stand with them if I continue to hide the truth of this from my own children? I want my kid to be the one on a playground standing by a kid getting picked on - for race or funny clothes or crazy hair or whatever...so my kid has to be armed with the knowledge of why some kids have it harder than others. He has to know his own privilege and use that platform that he has to help stand up for those that are marginalized.
So I did what I always do when I need to undertake something. I bought books.
I researched online and sought recommendations and bought myself four kids books on diversity and inclusion and kids that live in different cultures. We skipped all our regular home school yesterday and got cozy on the couch and read through all of them. It took a long time. My kids had lots of questions. There were things I never realized they had never seen - like a Muslim woman in a hijab. They thought I was joking that cows were sacred in India. We read this really beautiful book called "The Color of Us" that had a young artist going out into her community to see all the different shades of brown in her neighbors. It was gorgeous. We learned what the word 'diversity' means. And then I told them that in America, a black man had been killed by a white man just because of the color of his skin. I explained that even though it was wrong, there are still people out there that believe they are better than others. My kids were utterly confused - my son summed it up best by saying, "if we know this already as kids how can there be adults that don't know?" We talked about how this prejudice makes it harder for kids of color - and how we need to be the best partners that we can be to make the world a place where everyone feels heard. It was a hard conversation, where my mind was just whirring to hopefully say the right words to all these questions.
I hope that I made the right choices and said the right things, but even if I made a mistake - I am sure that starting the conversation and widening their world view was the right way to begin. And if my kids start talking to you about race - whether you are black or white or any shade in between - I hope that you appreciate their curiosity and help me encourage them to ask questions and hear the answers and continue to make this a moment of real change. A change that I truly believe we all have a share in making in whatever way we can.
I couldn't be more white. I did an Ancestry DNA and the most southern part of my DNA is from....Michigan. I am highly Slavic, Scottish, Eastern European, French....I am blue eyed and fair haired...I grew up in an entirely white family, in a mostly white town, going to a church where it is rare to see a person of color and going to school in the middle of corn fields with another group of white kids. I don't know if most families handled the issue of race like mine did back then, but it followed the school of thought that we don't see race. Everyone is equal, everyone is made by God exactly the way he wanted them to be, and skin is just a characteristic like hair color. As a kid in school, black history was a week or so of information that never really sunk in. It was awful, but so far removed from what I knew that it was impossible to sink in. I 100% grew up believing race was not an issue anymore, that everyone felt like I did. I had no clue of the bigotry and the hatred and the bias that permeated our country - and still does.
As I grew up, my world expanded. I met and shared conversations and experiences with people of many backgrounds and ethnicities and color. I followed current events and traveled to other cities much more worldly than my humble beginnings. It shifted my lens that I saw race through - showed me that while actual plantation slavery is a thing of the past, many other awful things followed from then up to where we are now. Fear of someone different, fear of something unknown, prejudice that is taught through careless words or racist jokes....so many little things that are woven into our psyche. Some that we know of and some that we just assimilated somewhere along the way.
As a parent, I have never HAD to think about talking about race to my kids. My kids don't face any danger from not having had a race talk. I packaged my race talk in with my be-kind-to-others and God-makes-us-all-different talks, thinking that was enough. We talk a lot about inclusion, about never leaving anyone out. But before this May, I had never sat down and shared so much truth about race in America as I did yesterday. I thought about it for a while. How much is too much for a 6 and 7 year old to understand? As their mom, I want to shield them as long as I possibly can from losing their innocence and trust in people. But if I were a black mom, with black kids...this conversation wouldn't be optional, right? It would be necessary. And if these kids have to lose their innocence, how can I say I stand with them if I continue to hide the truth of this from my own children? I want my kid to be the one on a playground standing by a kid getting picked on - for race or funny clothes or crazy hair or whatever...so my kid has to be armed with the knowledge of why some kids have it harder than others. He has to know his own privilege and use that platform that he has to help stand up for those that are marginalized.
So I did what I always do when I need to undertake something. I bought books.
I researched online and sought recommendations and bought myself four kids books on diversity and inclusion and kids that live in different cultures. We skipped all our regular home school yesterday and got cozy on the couch and read through all of them. It took a long time. My kids had lots of questions. There were things I never realized they had never seen - like a Muslim woman in a hijab. They thought I was joking that cows were sacred in India. We read this really beautiful book called "The Color of Us" that had a young artist going out into her community to see all the different shades of brown in her neighbors. It was gorgeous. We learned what the word 'diversity' means. And then I told them that in America, a black man had been killed by a white man just because of the color of his skin. I explained that even though it was wrong, there are still people out there that believe they are better than others. My kids were utterly confused - my son summed it up best by saying, "if we know this already as kids how can there be adults that don't know?" We talked about how this prejudice makes it harder for kids of color - and how we need to be the best partners that we can be to make the world a place where everyone feels heard. It was a hard conversation, where my mind was just whirring to hopefully say the right words to all these questions.
I hope that I made the right choices and said the right things, but even if I made a mistake - I am sure that starting the conversation and widening their world view was the right way to begin. And if my kids start talking to you about race - whether you are black or white or any shade in between - I hope that you appreciate their curiosity and help me encourage them to ask questions and hear the answers and continue to make this a moment of real change. A change that I truly believe we all have a share in making in whatever way we can.
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
The Day Alexa Woke Me Up
So anyone who pays even the slightest attention to my blog or Facebook is probably aware that sleep is a hot commodity around the Larive household. Our children hate sleep. Many, many people have offered solutions...sleep routines, less screen time, baths before bed, less sugar...so.many.things. I have tried them all. ALL. Sometimes at one time. Some help, but none solve. Both of my littles have sun blocking curtains, white noise machines, and echo dots to play music and/or bedtime stories in soothing tones. We do meditation apps - which my son likes and my daughter hates. We turn on bedtime playlists - which my daughter likes and my son hates. No matter what combo we use...the end result is the same 90% of the time. I wake up at 3 am with my 7 yr old son laying with his feet in my face and his head at the foot of my bed. And my 6 yr old daughter is horizontal with maximum limb spread between my husband and I.
I know. I will miss this someday. But in the here and now? Mama gets cranky when a string of crappy sleep nights catch up to her.
I am also a terrible sleeper. I wake up at every noise and movement. I sleep next to the exact opposite - the snoring log. I love him and he is gorgeous but it is a wonder I haven't murdered him in his sleep yet. So this is how our morning went today....
Four in the morning, I am jarred awake by Lauren Daigle singing 'Rescue' from an echo dot somewhere in the upstairs. After the initial startle, I sink back in my pillows - all four of them - and wonder half asleep if our 7 yr old accidentally set a music alarm on his. He is a giant Daigle fan. I figure it will just end and sort of doze back off. As I am drifting to sleep, the song changes to 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'...the really groovy bongo drum version? Yeah. I don't know in what world these two songs end up on the same station, but I am frankly too tired to investigate and no one else has even stirred.
That ends and I hear a hushed conversation and then muffled responses from Alexa that sound confused - and then a random hard rock song starts screaming through the second story...
My six year old daughter wanted to talk to Alexa. Apparently they had a miscommunication at some point. I then made, what I thought, was a very rational decision and disabled her Alexa. This caused her to cry forlornly that she loves Alexa and she is too lonely to be without anyone in her room if she can't talk to Alexa....so she jumps into our bed, narrowly averting landing on her brother who has been camped out at my feet since two. She does NOT go to sleep, but instead spoons me from behind so she can stage whisper in my ear, "It is morning. Can we get up? I see the sun. It is morning!" over and over again.
My husband hears NONE of this. NONE!
His alarm goes off at 545-ish and our daughter sits up straight next to him and yells, "Good Morning!" and then proceeds to get up for the day. I held strong til about three o'clock and then just frankly gave up on the day. Just did the necessary and sat my new cushier quarantine butt into the recliner. Tonight as I put her to bed, with her Alexa playing bedtime music, I reminded her - a little nicely, a little threatening-ish - that Alexa doesn't wake up til eight.
I know. I will miss this someday. But in the here and now? Mama gets cranky when a string of crappy sleep nights catch up to her.
I am also a terrible sleeper. I wake up at every noise and movement. I sleep next to the exact opposite - the snoring log. I love him and he is gorgeous but it is a wonder I haven't murdered him in his sleep yet. So this is how our morning went today....
Four in the morning, I am jarred awake by Lauren Daigle singing 'Rescue' from an echo dot somewhere in the upstairs. After the initial startle, I sink back in my pillows - all four of them - and wonder half asleep if our 7 yr old accidentally set a music alarm on his. He is a giant Daigle fan. I figure it will just end and sort of doze back off. As I am drifting to sleep, the song changes to 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'...the really groovy bongo drum version? Yeah. I don't know in what world these two songs end up on the same station, but I am frankly too tired to investigate and no one else has even stirred.
That ends and I hear a hushed conversation and then muffled responses from Alexa that sound confused - and then a random hard rock song starts screaming through the second story...
My six year old daughter wanted to talk to Alexa. Apparently they had a miscommunication at some point. I then made, what I thought, was a very rational decision and disabled her Alexa. This caused her to cry forlornly that she loves Alexa and she is too lonely to be without anyone in her room if she can't talk to Alexa....so she jumps into our bed, narrowly averting landing on her brother who has been camped out at my feet since two. She does NOT go to sleep, but instead spoons me from behind so she can stage whisper in my ear, "It is morning. Can we get up? I see the sun. It is morning!" over and over again.
My husband hears NONE of this. NONE!
His alarm goes off at 545-ish and our daughter sits up straight next to him and yells, "Good Morning!" and then proceeds to get up for the day. I held strong til about three o'clock and then just frankly gave up on the day. Just did the necessary and sat my new cushier quarantine butt into the recliner. Tonight as I put her to bed, with her Alexa playing bedtime music, I reminded her - a little nicely, a little threatening-ish - that Alexa doesn't wake up til eight.
Monday, May 18, 2020
The Day It Rained for 24 Hours
What have we been up to?
Glad you asked...
My kids have played a zillion games of Roblox and watched a trillion tv shows. They have had a boatload of video conferences where other households probably see waaaay to much of our seedy underbelly. They have made videos of themselves playing guitars and dancing and telling stories. And then sent them to everyone they know. It has been a lot. And that is with me kicking them off them still to do homework and eat and talk to the humans that live in this actual house with mouths that have brushed teeth in them. I need the Great Flood to be over...
Hubby went back to work and seems better for it. He is a man who likes to be moving so this is good. He has been bitten by my project bug though- I just found him in the basement at 8 at night using the saw to cut beams for a squat tower for the new workout area. Beams that he STOLE from my garden, mind you. Just because I hadn't given it a home yet, doesn't mean I didn't have a future plan for it...
I am in a quest to see how many days I can go between hair washes. I have very dry, and now very long, hair so I have been an every-other-day hair washer for years. Sometimes I stretch to three days if I am super lazy on day 3. I have long been intrigued with this group of people that claim to have 'trained' their hair into not needing shampoo...at all. This is true. They call it 'no-poo' Not sure I am buying that exactly, but the idea that ingredients in shampoo require you to reuse shampoo again over and over have me interested. Apparently Pantene is cocaine for your hair - who knew? So I bought a set of Burt's Bees natural shampoo and conditioner and set out on my quarantine haircare journey. Less for the all natural choice and more for the time value that I would gain from only having to blow dry and tame this beast once a week. It literally takes me an hour to blow dry my hair. On a related note, I rarely blow dry my hair. Thus my perpetual mom ponytail. I have made it to SIX days last week before it really felt like I needed to wash it. I will keep you updated...
School from home is going...well it is going. We spend 2-3 hours a day doing work and about 2 hours a day complaining about doing work. I am 98% certain that they will be retaining NONE of this information for next year. (Other than our kindergartener learning how to read - that one will probably stick.) You would think by now they would give in and understand school starts at 10, buckle up and prepare to LEARN...but no. Last minute snacks, half an hour to brush our hair, extra potty breaks, not sharp enough pencils....the pre-school is probably harder than the school at this point. We do have it down to a pretty good system of half teacher-worksheets and half-mommy apps and zoo journals. One is on the computer while I work with the other and then we flip flop. Then I shanghai their father into helping with bedtime reading and we call it good. It isn't awful. That is about as much accolades as it is going to get I think. I have made my peace with it.
We did quiet time after lunch today - which is when I put on Netflix and let them binge watch Fuller House so I can go upstairs and get my work done in the afternoons. Mondays get a little stressful because my phone and email blow up every Monday morning while we do school work. So Monday afternoons are pretty much free for alls while I get caught up and set up for the week.
We got our garden all planted before the rain - so either it will be awesome and things will germinate quickly OR it is all going to drown and turn to mush. Our 7 year old is pretty convinced this is the year he is going to grow an edible watermelon. This will be year 3 he has attempted it. Everyone pray for a baby watermelon for this child please. Our 6 year old just wants peas and sunflowers...she just walks along all the pea sprouts asking when she will be able to "eat them all up!" She is hilarious.
Our big kids went back to their mom's house for the week. We feel pretty safe letting them freely traverse between our houses now. Both houses are taking it pretty seriously and our kids know how to keep safe. That makes it a lot easier on them and us - it was hard to go without them for long time spans. This is way better. We are starting to think about when to re-schedule our senior's grad party, kinda waiting on the stay safe order expiration to see where things fall. The only thing worse than not having it now would be to have it - and have no one feel safe coming. We would rather wait later so everyone can come and have a great time together - especially since so many things were taken from these seniors this year due to covid - we really want her to get this party the right way.
Baseball has been cancelled. ugh. None of us really know what a Larive spring looks like without baseball...so that will be new.
Lots of new things this year...not many of them awesome, but some. Find the silver linings, right? As much as we want normal right now...our house is going to be moving very, very slowly toward normal life. Even when things begin to open up, I think we are going to go with the wait-and-see plan for a while. No point in doing all this for so long and then just rushing out and jumping in a stinking pile o' germs and spreading them all around the first day...we are going to take our time to smear our germs on y'all. You are welcome.
Glad you asked...
My kids have played a zillion games of Roblox and watched a trillion tv shows. They have had a boatload of video conferences where other households probably see waaaay to much of our seedy underbelly. They have made videos of themselves playing guitars and dancing and telling stories. And then sent them to everyone they know. It has been a lot. And that is with me kicking them off them still to do homework and eat and talk to the humans that live in this actual house with mouths that have brushed teeth in them. I need the Great Flood to be over...
Hubby went back to work and seems better for it. He is a man who likes to be moving so this is good. He has been bitten by my project bug though- I just found him in the basement at 8 at night using the saw to cut beams for a squat tower for the new workout area. Beams that he STOLE from my garden, mind you. Just because I hadn't given it a home yet, doesn't mean I didn't have a future plan for it...
I am in a quest to see how many days I can go between hair washes. I have very dry, and now very long, hair so I have been an every-other-day hair washer for years. Sometimes I stretch to three days if I am super lazy on day 3. I have long been intrigued with this group of people that claim to have 'trained' their hair into not needing shampoo...at all. This is true. They call it 'no-poo' Not sure I am buying that exactly, but the idea that ingredients in shampoo require you to reuse shampoo again over and over have me interested. Apparently Pantene is cocaine for your hair - who knew? So I bought a set of Burt's Bees natural shampoo and conditioner and set out on my quarantine haircare journey. Less for the all natural choice and more for the time value that I would gain from only having to blow dry and tame this beast once a week. It literally takes me an hour to blow dry my hair. On a related note, I rarely blow dry my hair. Thus my perpetual mom ponytail. I have made it to SIX days last week before it really felt like I needed to wash it. I will keep you updated...
School from home is going...well it is going. We spend 2-3 hours a day doing work and about 2 hours a day complaining about doing work. I am 98% certain that they will be retaining NONE of this information for next year. (Other than our kindergartener learning how to read - that one will probably stick.) You would think by now they would give in and understand school starts at 10, buckle up and prepare to LEARN...but no. Last minute snacks, half an hour to brush our hair, extra potty breaks, not sharp enough pencils....the pre-school is probably harder than the school at this point. We do have it down to a pretty good system of half teacher-worksheets and half-mommy apps and zoo journals. One is on the computer while I work with the other and then we flip flop. Then I shanghai their father into helping with bedtime reading and we call it good. It isn't awful. That is about as much accolades as it is going to get I think. I have made my peace with it.
We did quiet time after lunch today - which is when I put on Netflix and let them binge watch Fuller House so I can go upstairs and get my work done in the afternoons. Mondays get a little stressful because my phone and email blow up every Monday morning while we do school work. So Monday afternoons are pretty much free for alls while I get caught up and set up for the week.
We got our garden all planted before the rain - so either it will be awesome and things will germinate quickly OR it is all going to drown and turn to mush. Our 7 year old is pretty convinced this is the year he is going to grow an edible watermelon. This will be year 3 he has attempted it. Everyone pray for a baby watermelon for this child please. Our 6 year old just wants peas and sunflowers...she just walks along all the pea sprouts asking when she will be able to "eat them all up!" She is hilarious.
Our big kids went back to their mom's house for the week. We feel pretty safe letting them freely traverse between our houses now. Both houses are taking it pretty seriously and our kids know how to keep safe. That makes it a lot easier on them and us - it was hard to go without them for long time spans. This is way better. We are starting to think about when to re-schedule our senior's grad party, kinda waiting on the stay safe order expiration to see where things fall. The only thing worse than not having it now would be to have it - and have no one feel safe coming. We would rather wait later so everyone can come and have a great time together - especially since so many things were taken from these seniors this year due to covid - we really want her to get this party the right way.
Baseball has been cancelled. ugh. None of us really know what a Larive spring looks like without baseball...so that will be new.
Lots of new things this year...not many of them awesome, but some. Find the silver linings, right? As much as we want normal right now...our house is going to be moving very, very slowly toward normal life. Even when things begin to open up, I think we are going to go with the wait-and-see plan for a while. No point in doing all this for so long and then just rushing out and jumping in a stinking pile o' germs and spreading them all around the first day...we are going to take our time to smear our germs on y'all. You are welcome.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
The Day It Was May
Hello world! It has been a hot minute...I can't believe it is May already. Nine more days til our 'stay home, stay safe' order expires. It feels like I have my quarantine game down strong now. We have a rhythm of sorts. It plays along a pretty bipolar melody of highs and lows....there is no middle of the road here in Larive Land. We either have strong, productive, fun days....or we sit around in our pajamas and eat Cheetos all day missing our tribe. Or maybe that is just me. But in all honesty, it does seem like days feel extreme right now - everything flows together and I get work and school and parenting and cleaning done all together....or nothing clicks and everything pulls and tugs all day leaving me feeling like I have fought wars in the length of a day.
Members of our household have developed odd habits and interests in this strange time. My now six year old daughter has developed a very cavalier attitude toward clothing - creating the need for the new house rule that we must have underwear on before video calling anyone in the morning. When she does get dressed, her clothes are all inside out. To be very clear - they are NOT inside out in her closet. She puts them inside out and then puts them on. She just started it about a week into quarantine...no announcement, no discussion....she just walked down the stairs one morning and shrugged when I asked her, stating 'she just likes it this way now.' A few weeks later she started wearing just one sock - on purpose. Unless we had to put on shoes. Last week, she started wearing two socks again but BOTH ON THE SAME FOOT. Double socks. One foot. Other foot - bare. She insists on doing her own hair by putting as many barrettes and random pieces of string she can find in there. I am not sure how her re-entry to society is going to go, to be very honest.
My seven year old son keeps rearranging the living room and dining room knick knacks and pillows and what not. Our piano bench is now covered with an afghan and is serving as our 'coffee table' with coasters on it. I came home from the grocery store and the wooden lazy susan that sits in the middle of my dining room table had three empty plates balanced on it. Normally it holds the caddy for pencils and crayons and random school-at-home stuff. That was sitting to the side of it and just three empty plates were arranged on it. I still have no idea why.
My husband has gone through approximately ten pounds of candle wax in his melt warmers. I say 'his' because all I do with them is remember to turn them off at night when everyone else has gone to bed. His morning routine consists of coffee, feeding the fish, and picking out the scent of the day. Tomorrow he does get to go back to work so I can reduce the budget in that column now though.
I have just dug my heels hard into my existing rabbit holes...puzzles, gardening, thinking of projects to cajole my husband into helping me do. We got a lot of things done while he was off because he just does not sit still. So he rocked out a lot of things on the list with the unspoken understanding that I would school our kids while he kept himself busy- which made both of us happy. Marriage win. We have really leaned hard into...bird watching. Yup. Middle age is upon us. Stay with me...this gets good...we got a new feeder with a feed mix of nuts and berries and seeds and nature exploded! All of a sudden we have birds besides sparrows - black birds and woodpeckers and even a pair of finches. We also have a pair of blue jays that keep trying to peck through the roofs of all the neighborhood houses. Scared the crap out of us one day as our flue liner kept echoing this jack hammer noise. Dumb blue jay. We have seen him attempting the same thing at several rooftops since. Apparently he wants to be a house blue jay. I talk to them now...as I walk around the yard talking to my plants. Yup. Crazy nature lady or burgeoning Cinderella? You decide.
Our house flips around again this weekend as we get our big kids back under our roof. The littles are very excited to see their counterparts. Apparently they are bored of Mom and Dad. Dad will be back at work, which means getting up early again - which is definitely going to hurt him a bit the first week. That means the house gets quiet earlier again - which is definitely going to hurt me as I tighten up the bedtime leash, which has gotten pretty slack. I have a coronovirus to-go kit set up for the husband to keep in his work truck, since I definitely don't trust a construction site to be super strict with social distancing. He has Clorox wipes, homemade masks, and a big bottle of sanitizer all ready to go, right next to his lunch box. I let him know he would have to strip naked in the backyard before he can come in the house - he refused for some reason. Weird. We compromised on an immediate shower while I washed everything he wore or used all day in hot water. We are as ready as we can be for sticking a toe back out into the world. I will let you know how it goes - stay safe out there my friends...
Members of our household have developed odd habits and interests in this strange time. My now six year old daughter has developed a very cavalier attitude toward clothing - creating the need for the new house rule that we must have underwear on before video calling anyone in the morning. When she does get dressed, her clothes are all inside out. To be very clear - they are NOT inside out in her closet. She puts them inside out and then puts them on. She just started it about a week into quarantine...no announcement, no discussion....she just walked down the stairs one morning and shrugged when I asked her, stating 'she just likes it this way now.' A few weeks later she started wearing just one sock - on purpose. Unless we had to put on shoes. Last week, she started wearing two socks again but BOTH ON THE SAME FOOT. Double socks. One foot. Other foot - bare. She insists on doing her own hair by putting as many barrettes and random pieces of string she can find in there. I am not sure how her re-entry to society is going to go, to be very honest.
My seven year old son keeps rearranging the living room and dining room knick knacks and pillows and what not. Our piano bench is now covered with an afghan and is serving as our 'coffee table' with coasters on it. I came home from the grocery store and the wooden lazy susan that sits in the middle of my dining room table had three empty plates balanced on it. Normally it holds the caddy for pencils and crayons and random school-at-home stuff. That was sitting to the side of it and just three empty plates were arranged on it. I still have no idea why.
My husband has gone through approximately ten pounds of candle wax in his melt warmers. I say 'his' because all I do with them is remember to turn them off at night when everyone else has gone to bed. His morning routine consists of coffee, feeding the fish, and picking out the scent of the day. Tomorrow he does get to go back to work so I can reduce the budget in that column now though.
I have just dug my heels hard into my existing rabbit holes...puzzles, gardening, thinking of projects to cajole my husband into helping me do. We got a lot of things done while he was off because he just does not sit still. So he rocked out a lot of things on the list with the unspoken understanding that I would school our kids while he kept himself busy- which made both of us happy. Marriage win. We have really leaned hard into...bird watching. Yup. Middle age is upon us. Stay with me...this gets good...we got a new feeder with a feed mix of nuts and berries and seeds and nature exploded! All of a sudden we have birds besides sparrows - black birds and woodpeckers and even a pair of finches. We also have a pair of blue jays that keep trying to peck through the roofs of all the neighborhood houses. Scared the crap out of us one day as our flue liner kept echoing this jack hammer noise. Dumb blue jay. We have seen him attempting the same thing at several rooftops since. Apparently he wants to be a house blue jay. I talk to them now...as I walk around the yard talking to my plants. Yup. Crazy nature lady or burgeoning Cinderella? You decide.
Our house flips around again this weekend as we get our big kids back under our roof. The littles are very excited to see their counterparts. Apparently they are bored of Mom and Dad. Dad will be back at work, which means getting up early again - which is definitely going to hurt him a bit the first week. That means the house gets quiet earlier again - which is definitely going to hurt me as I tighten up the bedtime leash, which has gotten pretty slack. I have a coronovirus to-go kit set up for the husband to keep in his work truck, since I definitely don't trust a construction site to be super strict with social distancing. He has Clorox wipes, homemade masks, and a big bottle of sanitizer all ready to go, right next to his lunch box. I let him know he would have to strip naked in the backyard before he can come in the house - he refused for some reason. Weird. We compromised on an immediate shower while I washed everything he wore or used all day in hot water. We are as ready as we can be for sticking a toe back out into the world. I will let you know how it goes - stay safe out there my friends...
Saturday, April 25, 2020
The Day I Dug for Four Hours
So 'dug' is maybe a bit of an exaggeration....more like raked and tilled and then got down on my hands and knees and pulled chunks of grass for four hours. And it was GLORIOUS. We are putting a garden in this year -an actual in the ground garden, rather than another raised bed creation. We are putting it in right next to the street. Technically...this is in the hell strip between the street and the sidewalk and the city has all claim to it - except when it is time to mow it. However, it just looks like wasted space and opportunity to me - so we rotatilled it up and I am going to plant somewhat short plants and see if anyone gives me a hard time. Tomorrow we are going to put some logs around it and fill it up with mulch - and then I am good to start planting.
Our first week of distance learning was pretty brutal - but we made it through. Our kindergartner has a pretty good handle on the things she has to do - her teacher does cute videos and she only gave the kids a lesson or two a day. My first grader? His teacher is fantastically old-school and I love it - but she is trying to continue a full day worth of curriculum at home and we just can't do it and keep from having mental breakdowns. So I did end up calling her and negotiating to a schedule that is more manageable for our house right now. I feel a lot better having talked with her and adjusted our schedule a bit, hopefully next week will be a much better week for us.
Today was the day our high school daughter should have had her senior prom. She is with her mom right now and they got her all dressed up and went for car visits to family and took pictures in her dress. She looked just gorgeous. I keep waiting for her school to come up with some kind of senior send off plan for all these kids to make up for these missed milestones, but I think they are waiting just like the rest of us to see what the future brings. We are already plotting about holding a hillbilly prom for her and some friends out in my sister's pole barn once we are free to move around the world again. Just tough not knowing when that will be. Her grad party is planned for mid-June and it isn't looking like that is going to work out right now either, so we will have to adjust again. I should be fantastic at adjusting by now....
We have done some fantastic things in these last few weeks - there is much to be said for silver linings. My husband is going gangbusters on projects we have been talking about for a while. He has our basement almost completely remodeled. What once was a bedroom and a giant holding space for all our stuff is now two bedrooms, a workroom, a family room, and a workout space. It makes me super happy. It almost didn't happen. He and I have a pattern we go through. I am a dreamer and a planner and a reworker - I am always looking at stuff and thinking how it could work better. He always half listens to my ideas, tell me they are ridiculous and/or impossible, and then eventually comes around while complaining still, and then at the end tells me how fantastic it is. We make a good team of vision and know-how... we just have to iron out the middle part of the process to be more efficient. So the basement is almost done, we have a new garden in, he rebuilt the downstairs shower, he retiled in front of the fireplace, he painted twenty different things outside red, and has burned a lot of stuff in the fire pit. A LOT. None of this EVER would have happened right now normally. Normally spring is the beginning of crazy season for him, normally I have to hunt him down to have a conversation and run the house pretty much alone while he is out bringing home the spring bacon. So silver lining....my honey to do list is getting decimated.
Also on this silver lining list...waking up without an alarm clock, movie nights cuddled with my kids, Zoom Catan, family meals, as many campfire nights as we want, going out on a Thursday night to watch the stars, all the acts of kindness I see happening all over the community, unlimited garden time, reading an entire book, puzzling with my husband on my new puzzle board, bike rides....and on and on and on. We have belly laughed every day and are spending time on our family and our home together. I miss many things, but keeping focused on all these silver linings is going to keep me going.
Our first week of distance learning was pretty brutal - but we made it through. Our kindergartner has a pretty good handle on the things she has to do - her teacher does cute videos and she only gave the kids a lesson or two a day. My first grader? His teacher is fantastically old-school and I love it - but she is trying to continue a full day worth of curriculum at home and we just can't do it and keep from having mental breakdowns. So I did end up calling her and negotiating to a schedule that is more manageable for our house right now. I feel a lot better having talked with her and adjusted our schedule a bit, hopefully next week will be a much better week for us.
Today was the day our high school daughter should have had her senior prom. She is with her mom right now and they got her all dressed up and went for car visits to family and took pictures in her dress. She looked just gorgeous. I keep waiting for her school to come up with some kind of senior send off plan for all these kids to make up for these missed milestones, but I think they are waiting just like the rest of us to see what the future brings. We are already plotting about holding a hillbilly prom for her and some friends out in my sister's pole barn once we are free to move around the world again. Just tough not knowing when that will be. Her grad party is planned for mid-June and it isn't looking like that is going to work out right now either, so we will have to adjust again. I should be fantastic at adjusting by now....
We have done some fantastic things in these last few weeks - there is much to be said for silver linings. My husband is going gangbusters on projects we have been talking about for a while. He has our basement almost completely remodeled. What once was a bedroom and a giant holding space for all our stuff is now two bedrooms, a workroom, a family room, and a workout space. It makes me super happy. It almost didn't happen. He and I have a pattern we go through. I am a dreamer and a planner and a reworker - I am always looking at stuff and thinking how it could work better. He always half listens to my ideas, tell me they are ridiculous and/or impossible, and then eventually comes around while complaining still, and then at the end tells me how fantastic it is. We make a good team of vision and know-how... we just have to iron out the middle part of the process to be more efficient. So the basement is almost done, we have a new garden in, he rebuilt the downstairs shower, he retiled in front of the fireplace, he painted twenty different things outside red, and has burned a lot of stuff in the fire pit. A LOT. None of this EVER would have happened right now normally. Normally spring is the beginning of crazy season for him, normally I have to hunt him down to have a conversation and run the house pretty much alone while he is out bringing home the spring bacon. So silver lining....my honey to do list is getting decimated.
Also on this silver lining list...waking up without an alarm clock, movie nights cuddled with my kids, Zoom Catan, family meals, as many campfire nights as we want, going out on a Thursday night to watch the stars, all the acts of kindness I see happening all over the community, unlimited garden time, reading an entire book, puzzling with my husband on my new puzzle board, bike rides....and on and on and on. We have belly laughed every day and are spending time on our family and our home together. I miss many things, but keeping focused on all these silver linings is going to keep me going.
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